


And Yet Speak Louder

by icarus_chained



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Coda, Daemons, Declarations Of Love, Episode Tag, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, POV First Person, Reaction, Romance, Souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2491625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Adventure of the Three Garridebs, Watson's injury sparks an astonishing gesture from Holmes and his daemon both, one which he and his can only return in kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Yet Speak Louder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the theme of taboo. Daemon AU, but following canon fairly straight. Also, schmoop. Pure and utter schmoop, of the worst kind -_-;

"... You know that you are my best and dearest friend, do you not?"

I looked up, startled, from where I had been cleaning the thin line of the bullet wound across my thigh. Not something a man ought necessarily be doing in company, of course, but aside from our daemons there was none present but Holmes, and since it had been he who cut my trousers open to bare the wound in the first place, I had seen no harm in braving his company to treat it. The light was better in the sitting room, and the fire provided a steady source of hot water.

When I looked at him, though, after that startling pronouncement, I wondered if it would not have been better to tend it elsewhere after all. Not for propriety's sake, you understand, but for my friend's. His eyes were fixed on that red mark across my flesh, and it was a very grave and pensive expression with which he looked at me. 

"I have never doubted it," I answered honestly, staring at him in some confusion, and not a little worry. "That is a strange question, Holmes. What brings you to it?"

He made a little noise, a sharp exhale of frustration or dismissal, and twitched a pale hand in the firelight. On his shoulder, Reti mantled his wings in equal unease, such that my own Dearshul raised her shaggy head from my good knee to join me in my concerned stare. We had never seen, I think, Holmes so damned uneasy after the successful conclusion of a case. A time or two in the midst of one, maybe, but never afterwards, when by all rights the joy of victory should still be carrying him clear of all dark moods. 

And yes, I had an inkling as to why this time it did not, but the wound was truthfully small, to both our satisfaction, and honestly should not have troubled him still.

"... Holmes?" I pressed, putting the bowl of water carefully down on the floor, the better to fix my attention purely on him. My thigh twinged a little at the motion, prompting a thin trickle of blood, and I saw that it was indeed what pricked at him. Reti's beady eyes were fixed upon it, and Holmes not far behind, although it was not quite pain in their looks. Only pensiveness, and something for which I had no name.

It occurred to me, abruptly, that Holmes had never before had to face the thought of _my_ mortality. His own, yes. We both had faced that, a few times over, and that once, those terrible three years, full deeply. But my death had never before been much threatened. Until now.

"I am not a well-spoken man," Holmes said at last, looking at me curiously. At Dearshul, who lay at ease by my side, her bright eyes warm and welcoming upon him. My dear soul, who valued him as much as I. "I wonder sometimes if I should be a better one, for your sake. If I should tell of how I admire your courage, which I have never once found wanting. Or of how grateful I have been for your company, even and especially in the darkest of times. If I should ... If I should say what it means to me, that you would bear a wound for my sake."

He stopped, his lips pressed tight and that nameless thing so stark in his eyes, and for a moment I could not so much as breathe. I could not move, could not speak. My hand found Dearshul's neck, tangled itself helplessly in my daemon's fur, and I stared at him for no less than a minute without any means to answer.

Then he looked away. He ducked his head, expression caught between ruefulness and shame, and released me from the spell of his gaze. I moved, leaned forward across my wound with my hand outstretched, and strove to answer his unnecessary shame as I could not have answered his love, spoken so suddenly where it had so rarely been before.

"I do not need you to say it," I said, low and perhaps a little desperate, wanting him to look at me once again. Not just his daemon, whose eyes had never left mine, but _him_. Holmes. My friend. My soul companion. "Holmes," I begged of him, and waited until his eyes were mine once more. "I have never needed you to say it. Your actions have always spoken as loud as words, and louder still. Please believe me, my friend. I would bear a thousand wounds for you, and count every one well worth it. In all our time together, I have never doubted your care, nor ever tried to be less than worthy of it."

In the wake of that, as I had been stricken silent before, so too now was he. He fell still, that great and terrible stillness that came upon him before decisive action, and that thing in his eyes, that love, became something more. A peace, I think. A determination. I do not know, even now. He looked at me, his eyes full of that transmutation, and then he looked at the magpie perched yet upon his shoulder. He looked at Reti, his daemon, who looked back at him in equal and wordless acknowledgement, and made some silent pact between them.

And then, very carefully, they left the fireplace and moved instead to me. They came to stand before me, who sat bleeding gently with my wolfhound at my side, and looked down upon us with something that was almost a smile on thin lips and in bright, avian eyes. We stared at them, my daemon and I, and waited in strange silence for the fruit of their determination.

"My actions, you say," Holmes murmured, with an odd lightness of spirit. "I would have thought them no better than my words, at times. This one less than most, perhaps, but if action is the answer you wish for your wounds, then action you shall have. I only hope that you forgive us for it."

He smiled at me, wry and rueful, and at Dearshul in turn, and then he held up a hand towards his shoulder and caught his daemon as he hopped gently into it. He wrapped both hands around Reti, who strangely did not speak, and before I quite understood what he was doing, he had reached down and _laid his daemon upon my knee_. He laid Reti upon me, his hands warm and shaking where they pressed bright feathers against my bared skin, and all four of us froze as though stricken to stone. We froze, but none so very still as myself, and the foreign soul now pressed into my keeping.

"... _What_?" Dearshul spoke, a bass growl from the depths of her chest, speaking in both our steads. Reti flinched a little on my knee, and half-instinctively I reached forward to comfort him, before snatching back the traitorous hand in horrified shock. Holmes laughed, short and startled and on the edge of hysteria, and let go one hand from his daemon to catch mine and guide it back. Dearshul answered the act with a stunned, desperate whine of confusion, and as my fingers touched gently at a fragile, feathered head, I could not help but echo her.

"Holmes," I begged, all my fear and my terror in my voice. He held my hand to his daemon's head, trusting his soul to be still beneath my touch, and for my part I found myself cradling that tiny skull with all the care my doctor's fingers had ever hoped to possess. Reti trembled, still unspeaking, but he gave himself up willingly. Trust. An impossible, _appalling_ trust, and by god I could not help but answer it. By all that was sacred, I could not help but try to earn it.

"I'm sorry," Holmes said, gently. He was shaking, I saw. The tremors shook him steady and unceasing, and yet he did not flinch, nor move to take his daemon back from me. "I know this was never what you wanted. It is anathema, a thousand times over. Yet we have never cared overmuch for that, Reti and I. This was the only action that seemed to fit. You are all that is dear to us, my friend. We could not bear to lose you."

I breathed. Tight and desperate, all my focus fixed on the fragile form beneath my hand, on the soul my friend had so blithely given into my keeping. Reti looked back at me, with more apology than Holmes, if also less hesitance. He arched his wings carefully, nudging Holmes' hand up and away, so that it could be obvious that it was his will as well as his human's that kept him there. On my knee. Beneath my hand. He tilted his head into the trembling touch of my finger, while Holmes straightened carefully away from us, and closed his eyes with firm, deliberate calm. Entrusting himself, the proof of what Holmes had said. Looking at him, I do not think there was a thought in my head, save for some sensation of horror still, and, beneath it, a more deep and abiding love than I had ever felt. 

Anathema, Holmes said. Yes, it was that. The greatest of taboos, far beyond the reach of propriety or even sanity. A gift beyond price, that only a madman would think to offer, and only Holmes with such wry courage. If his words had struck me, his action all but cleft my heart in two, and there was nothing now but to answer it. So great and terrible a gesture as that, so earnestly meant, I could not hope but to answer in kind.

"... Dearshul?" I asked, for it was her choice as well as mine, and she loved them as dearly as I. Holmes looked at us, trying so hard for unperturbed, managing only hopeful instead, and perhaps a little terrified. I almost smiled for it, and reached out my spare hand for my daemon. "What do you think, dearest?"

She looked at me, with another's daemon upon my knee. She looked at him, with his soul quite literally laid bare beneath our hand. She looked at Reti, who had opened one eye to look with wary hope upon her. And then, she looked back at me, my daemon, and stood to her full and powerful height at my side, and ... leaned forward, into a rangy form so carefully unflinching, and rested her great head gently against Holmes' chest. He staggered, his breath rushing forth as though she'd knocked it from him, and brought his hands into her fur as though they'd been magnetised to her. We gasped, all four of us, at the rush of _something_ that swept us all then, and for the smallest second I fancied that I heard all our hearts beat in sudden unison, hard and wild and startled.

"Yes," my daemon said, while she all but held my friend on his feet, bearing him up when the shock threatened to ruin him altogether. Reti shuddered beneath my hand, his wing spread out across my thigh to hold himself steady, the tip of it stained a little now with my blood. Dearshul chuckled softly, with more wolf to her than I had seen in a long, long time, and pressed her nose beneath Holmes' watch-chain happily. "I think _yes_ ," she said, perhaps redundantly, and I think I have never known more joy than I felt in that moment. 

I looked at Holmes. I lifted his daemon carefully, brought Reti from my knee to rest instead upon my breast, and across the backs of our shared souls I met my friend's eyes. No. I met my _love's_ eyes. My mate, my partner, anathema in so many ways and no less perfect for that. Maybe moreso. I held his gaze and smiled, and knew true joy when after a moment, wry and hesitant, he gave me back its echo, no less strong and no less happy than my own.

"Well then," he said, bemused and deeply calm, at peace in my daemon's keeping. "That would seem to be that, then. Wouldn't it."

And yes. Yes, indeed it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Watson's daemon, Dearshul, is a grey [Irish Wolfhound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Wolfhound), which aside from being known for their 'loyalty, affection, patience and devotion' are also HUGE, imposing, and carry the warning "Gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked". *grins faintly* Seemed to suit? The name, Dearshul, is a Scots Gaelic name that appears to mean something like 'true eye'. I think.
> 
> Holmes' daemon, Reti, is a [Eurasian Magpie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie), straight-up one of the most intelligent birds ever. Actually, all versions of Holmes have a corvid daemon in my head, though the individual iterations all have a different member of the family. Heh. The name, 'Reti', is actually a reference to a chess opening/chess grandmaster, for reasons I've plum forgotten. *shrugs sheepishly*


End file.
